Second Chance Proposal

by Anna Schmidt

  “It is not for the war, Liddy. George says that the Americans are trying to maintain the peace. All they want to do is protect the shoreline and the best way to do that apparently is with submarines.”

  “Those ships are instruments of war, John.” Surely, it was the excitement of seeing his friend after all these months. Surely, it was the fact that it was now nearly eleven o’clock and he was exhausted after his long day. He was not thinking clearly.

  “They are also instruments for keeping the peace. Why can’t you understand that I would do this for us, for our future? It would not be forever, Liddy. I am not leaving you. George says—”

  “I do not care what George says,” she said through gritted teeth. “This man is not of our faith, and he knows nothing of our ways.”

  “He has been a good friend to me.”

  “And for that I am grateful, but John, can you not see that I am afraid?”

  “And can you not see that all I want is to make sure you never have anything to fear ever again?”

  “You cannot control what happens to us, John. If it be God’s will that—”

  “Why then might you not consider that this is God’s will, that the sudden appearance of my former business partner is part of God’s plan for us?”

  “Or perhaps George Stevens with his fancy motorcar and his driver and his expensive clothes is nothing more than temptation, John Amman, a test to see if you have conquered your wanderlust once and for all and will never again be tempted by the outside world.”

  The light of excitement that had lit his eyes—indeed, his entire face—from the moment he’d come to tell her the news dimmed. “Will you never have trust in me, Liddy?”

  “Oh, John, I love you so very much and...”

  “But you do not trust me, Liddy.”

  “I...” She struggled to find the words. “You can understand that I have doubts. You were away for eight years, John, and while it’s true that you have returned to us—to me—you cannot deny the pull of that outside world still works within you.”

  “They are not our enemy, Liddy.”

  “I know, but they are also not of our ways.”

  “And in our ways, is it not the duty of the man to provide for his wife and children? To make sure they have shelter and food and the children have a future?”

  “This is true, but...”

  “This is all I am trying to do, Liddy. We are getting a later start on our life together than most. We do not have the years younger couples have to build a business and a future. Our need is now.”

  “We have shelter and food enough. You have work and in time...”

  He stood up and started to pace. He turned once as if to say something more and then paced again. Lydia sat in her chair, hands folded in her lap, and waited.

  “There is another side to this, Liddy. George Stevens is my friend. He has told me that if I turn this down he will not be awarded the contract. The government wants to begin at once.”

  “There must be others who can do what he wishes you to do in this project.”

  “No doubt. But finding that man would take time that George doesn’t have. He has also suffered great financial losses these last years and...”

  Lydia could not suppress a laugh. “Yet he arrived here in a shiny motorcar with a driver,” she reminded him.

  John shrugged. “That’s George. He has a habit of spending before he earns. He thinks it is important to make the good impression. I expect he is deeply in debt for his trouble.”

  “Then all the more reason not to become involved in his plan,” Lydia argued. “He is not to be trusted.”

  “His father hired me when no one else would. George made me an equal partner in that business. He is my friend.”

  Would it truly come to this? That she would have to demand that he choose her or his friend? “I am so very tired, John, and not thinking clearly. Can we not discuss this tomorrow?”

  “George needs my answer tomorrow,” he replied as he stood at the window staring into the darkness.

  Lydia let out a sigh of resignation. “Then do what you must,” she said quietly, all the while silently praying that he would choose her this time.

  Instead, he picked up his hat and walked to the door. “I would like your blessing, Liddy, and your trust that I am doing this for us as much as for George.”

  So he was going away again. “I cannot...” she began, and her voice broke as the sobs she’d been holding back spilled out. “Please just go,” she managed when he started to cross the room to her. She looked up at him. “Go,” she whispered.

  His lips hardened into a thin line and he turned away and stalked to the door. “I’m going, then, and this time I won’t bother to write, Liddy,” he said as he left.

  * * *

  When Lydia woke the following morning after most of the night spent pacing the floor, fighting the desire to run across the yard that separated them and up to John’s apartment, Greta was in the kitchen frying bacon.

  “What are you doing here?” Lydia croaked, her throat raw from crying most of the night.

  “I came to find out what is going on. I mean it is perfectly understandable that as you and John approach your wedding day one or both of you will get a case of nerves but this business is ridiculous. Luke says that John has packed up and left with that man. How could you let this happen yet again, Liddy?” She scooped up two strips of the bacon and plopped them onto a plate that she set in front of Lydia. “Eat,” she commanded as she pulled out a chair opposite Lydia and sat down.

  “I did not let this happen this time nor the time before,” Lydia protested. “John is a grown man and...”

  “A man who loves you,” Greta reminded her.

  “Then why did he leave?” Lydia said quietly as the tears once again leaked down her cheeks.

  Greta grasped her sister’s hand and squeezed it. “Oh, Liddy, he wants to make a good life for you. The wages Roger Hadwell pays him wouldn’t be enough to support John alone if Luke hadn’t bartered the living space for John maintaining the stables.”

  “He has orders for his furniture.”

  “And in time there will be more orders, enough to build a proper business, but that will all take time, Liddy, and Luke says that with the school closing and the loss of your stipend...”

  “I can get other work,” Lydia protested.

  “Doing what? There are no jobs in Celery Fields. Are you truly going to go out into the Sarasota community and clean houses?”

  “It’s honorable work.”

  “It is, but I seem to recall that you were the one who was concerned about John taking orders for his furniture business from outsiders. How could you work for them?”

  Greta’s occasional burst of logic could be maddening. She had a point, of course. “Still...” Lydia began searching for some counterargument. “The point is that John keeps returning to their world and I am afraid...”

  “Ah, finally we get to the root of it. You are afraid of losing him. Well, look around, Liddy. He’s already gone. Now, the question is what will you do about it?”

  “He has made his choice.”

  “And who placed him in the position of having to choose?” Greta rolled her eyes. “The way he explained the whole thing to Luke when he came by late last night, his friend needs his help. Would you have him ignore that?”

  “No, but...”

  Greta continued as if Liddy had not spoken. “What would Luke have done when his business burned to the ground if friends and neighbors from both Celery Fields and Sarasota had not stepped up to help him rebuild? It’s what we do, Liddy, and if you needed some reassurance that John has indeed returned to his roots, this should surely be it.”

  “Now you are truly making no sense,” Lydia fumed as she picked at a strip
of bacon. “John has chosen, all right. He has chosen the outside world.”

  “No. He has chosen to help his friend. He will come back once that is done just like Luke’s customers from Sarasota went back to their lives after helping him after the fire.”

  This time I will not write.

  John’s parting words rang in her ears. He hadn’t written last time, either, so why say such a thing? “It’s over,” she said wearily as she carried her dishes to the sink. She stood there for a long moment and looked across the yard to John’s rooms. There was no difference that she could see, but in her heart she felt his absence as surely as if there had been some physical sign that he had left. “Where are the children?” she asked.

  “Bettina is watching them.” Greta got up and began wiping the kitchen table and clearing away the skillet she’d used for the bacon. “Pleasant will need to be told,” she said.

  “I expect that Gertrude Hadwell has already let her know, along with Hilda Yoder and others.” It would be some time before the gossips in the community stopped talking about this. “I am sorry for Gert,” she added wistfully. “She has gotten so used to having John back again.”

  “I am not worried about Gertrude Hadwell, Liddy. I am worried about you—to have your heart broken once is bad enough, but to repeat that experience?” She actually shuddered. “I can’t begin to imagine what...”

  “I will be fine, Greta.”

  But would she? She had lost her livelihood, work she truly loved and now John had left her for a second time. Would she ever be fine again?

  Chapter Thirteen

  It had been a long time since John had ridden in a motorcar, especially one as fine as George Stevens’s Packard. His Amish faith allowed him to ride in such a vehicle when necessary as long as he neither operated nor owned the car. He had to wonder if the elders would consider this trip “necessary.” He ran his palm over the soft cloth seat, marveling at the space available for a third person to sit comfortably between George and him.

  George had dozed off almost as soon as his driver had pulled away from the Sarasota hotel. He had asked no questions when John had showed up at his suite and said that he was ready to accept his former partner’s offer. John suspected that George was just relieved to hear his decision and didn’t want to risk jinxing it by asking too many questions. All through breakfast George had talked about his wife, Bonnie. But not once had he asked about Lydia.

  John studied the folders of papers George had handed him at breakfast. His education had stopped after eight years, as did formal learning for all Amish boys, but in the years he’d spent working with George and other Englischers his reading and understanding of the written word had increased significantly. Still, the government contract and the specifications for submarine parts that George expected him to design made little sense to him. Not for the first time he wished Liddy were riding in the car with him.

  He laid the papers on the seat next to George and pinched the bridge of his nose as he squinted his eyes closed and then opened them again to stare out the open window. Florida was flatland dotted with orchards of citrus trees, fields planted with vegetables, swamps, horse farms and small towns. The recent drought had turned the landscape a greenish-brown and the fronds of the tall, slender coconut palms drooped toward the ground as if willing the water to rise up and satisfy their thirst. He watched an egret fly next to the car, keeping pace with it for a bit before veering off to land in a ditch. He saw a flock of roseate spoonbills fly across the sky in the distance, their pink bodies reminding him of the sunset that he had watched with Liddy at the bay.

  Liddy. Beautiful. Stubborn. Impossible.

  Why couldn’t he make her understand that everything he did, every decision he made, was for one purpose only? Her happiness was everything to him. After returning to Celery Fields and learning that he still had a chance to make things right with her, to win her heart this time forever, how many nights had he paced the small confines of his rooms above the stables thinking of how best to build a life with her?

  He frowned.

  And why did he need to prove himself to her over and over again? After all, she had been the one to put community ahead of their happiness. And he had come to accept that decision, so why was it so difficult for her to accept that he was doing this partly because George needed his help? She had refused even to consider the possibility that George Stevens might have been sent to them, a blessing in disguise. She was always talking about how God would provide. Well, to John’s way of thinking, a person had to be open to such messages and opportunities. Annoyed by thoughts of Liddy’s obstinacy, he set his lips in a tight, hard line, folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes.

  But sleep did not come. Instead, his mind reeled with memories of Liddy’s laughter, her smile, her touch, her kiss. Not even George’s snoring or the thud of the car’s tires on the uneven road could block out the sweetness of those times that he and Liddy had shared recently. He felt his features relax into a smile as he recalled her story of Greta’s plans for their wedding.

  “You would think she was planning her own nuptials,” Liddy had said with a shake of her head after describing the menu for the wedding supper that Greta had suggested. “I keep trying to tell her that we need everything plain, the way it should be, but she seems determined to find a way to turn the entire event into some kind of community celebration.”

  “Well, isn’t it?” he asked, suddenly unsure whether or not Liddy truly loved him or simply saw this as her last chance to marry.

  “Oh, John, of course it is. But we have waited for so long and all that truly matters is that we will finally be together. A wedding is an event, a celebration. But it is the marriage that I am looking forward to—the years we are going to share together with God’s blessing.”

  And after that he’d entertained no more doubts.

  Until now.

  “Are you hungry, John?”

  John opened his eyes and found George watching him, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Do you want to stop?” he replied, not wanting to be any trouble.

  George chuckled. “You haven’t changed a bit, my friend. Still answering a question with another question.” He leaned forward. “Henry, next diner you see let’s pull in.”

  Over lunch George explained the project in a way that set John on the path to understanding the task before them. He realized that the work was exactly as George had described it, like building the workings of a clock. As they ate John made some detailed sketches on a napkin and showed them to George.

  His partner grinned. “That’s the ticket,” he said. “I see what you’ve done. Just in changing the angle of that piece, it will eliminate the necessity of this connector and...” He released a low, satisfied whistle. “If we get this order done early, there’s every possibility that the government will give us another project and then another and before you know it, my friend, we will be right back where we were before.”

  John forced a smile. “Yah.”

  But the truth was that he didn’t wanted to be back where he was with George and their business. What he really wanted was to be back with Liddy.

  * * *

  After John left, Lydia found that she could not stand being in the house alone. Over the weeks that had passed since she had accepted John’s proposal she had spent most of her time imagining them living there together. She had even started to make small changes in preparation for John moving in after the wedding. The chair she knew he favored had replaced the one her father had used in the front room. She had taken down the hat her father used to wear from the peg by the back door where it had hung since his death a few years earlier. Now the peg was empty. The house seemed to be waiting for John’s arrival.

  “An arrival that will never happen,” she muttered as she shook out the small rag rug she had placed on t
he floor by the bed they would have shared.

  “You are talking to yourself, Lydia.” Her half sister, Pleasant, frowned with concern as she crossed the yard.

  Lydia gave Pleasant a weak smile. “So I am. Come in. I just squeezed some fresh juice from the oranges you brought me yesterday.”

  Pleasant sat at the table in the chair that Lydia had imagined John using for their shared meals. Lydia could feel Pleasant watching her closely. “You look tired,” she said when Lydia set two glasses of juice and a plate of ginger cookies on the table.

  Lydia shrugged. “There’s a lot to be done to finish the school year and then prepare the building to be permanently closed.”

  They sipped their juice in silence. “You haven’t heard from John?”

  He’d been gone for ten days. “I don’t expect I will. After all his parting words were that this time he would not write.” She gave a bitter bark of a laugh. “As if somehow this time were any different than...”

  To her shock she began to cry and because this was Pleasant, ever practical and stoic, rather than the more excitable Greta, Lydia gave in to the tears she had held inside for days now.

  Pleasant waited for the storm of tears to pass, acknowledging the outburst only by passing Lydia a napkin to use for wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. It was their way to not make a fuss. The two of them had always enjoyed this special bond.

  “In time I suppose...” Lydia began but did not finish the thought as she took a sip of her juice.

  Pleasant tapped her fingers nervously on the tabletop. “I have something I must tell you, Liddy,” she said softly. “Jeremiah says that I should have told you long ago, but that is the way he is.”

  “Has something happened with one of the children?” Lydia felt ashamed that she had been so focused on her own misery that she might have overlooked something that would be a concern for Pleasant.